


Gone to the Birds

by predilection



Category: Kamen Rider - All Media Types, Kamen Rider OOO
Genre: Birds, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 06:36:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18068447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/predilection/pseuds/predilection
Summary: With Eiji's help, Ankh rescues birds.





	Gone to the Birds

**Author's Note:**

> I thought about this fic on and off for four years before I finally managed to write it. 
> 
> Please note that I'm not an ornithologist. Also note that this fic contains major spoilers for the ending of OOO.

The first time it happens, Eiji wakes at the crack of dawn to Ankh holding his left bicep in a death grip. He looks panicked in a way that has Eiji rummaging for a pair of pants before he even asks, "Where's the yummy?"

Ankh grimaces in reply. He grabs Eiji's arm again and drags him from the room they share. Ankh's claws are digging into his skin by the time Ankh leads them down the street and onto a neighbor's property where there's definitely no yummy in sight.

"Ankh?"

Ankh finally lets go, and he points at a black ball that's almost completely hidden by the plants in the garden. He crouches down next to it and says, "It hit the window." 

Eiji takes a step closer, and it's only then that he realizes that it isn't a ball at all. It's a bird, a raven, and it's clearly startled since it's not reacting to their presence.

There's more than one question on the tip of his tongue, but Eiji says, "Oh. Stay here. I'll be right back."

Eiji is no expert on birds, especially when it comes to the semi-monstrous one he cohabitates with these days, but he read about them as a child, and he ran into some situations involving them in his travels. Besides, he remembers when a starling crashed into the window of his childhood bedroom, and how his grandfather took care of it.

"What do you mean you'll be back? Oi, Eiji!" Ankh calls after him, but he doesn't follow as Eiji makes his way back to Cous Coussier. Eiji empties a cardboard box that was holding condiments in the kitchen, and uses a pen to poke a handful of holes into the side of it. He also grabs a dish towel before making his way back to Ankh and the raven. 

He stops, box and towel in hand, at the curb by the neighbor's house and takes in the concerned look on Ankh's face as he stares down at the bird. He's not used to Ankh looking so vulnerable, and he's surprised by the sight.

"Where did you go?" Ankh asks, bringing him back to the task at hand.

Eiji kneels next to Ankh and puts the box down between them. He covers one his hands with the towel and uses it as glove to carefully pick up the raven. He sets it into the box, but when he moves to close the box, Ankh's hand darts out to grab his. 

"What are you doing?" 

"It's in shock, right?" Eiji says. "Putting it in a dark place will give it a chance to recover."

"Will it?" Ankh sounds skeptical, but he lets Eiji go and doesn't stop him when he folds the cardboard flaps over the top of the box.

"It will," Eiji tells him, bringing himself to his feet, the box held in his hands. "We'll take it back with us. In half hour or so, we'll check on it. If it's feeling better, it should fly away."

"And if it isn't?" Ankh asks, an edge to his voice.

"We have to believe it's going to be okay," Eiji says and offers Ankh a smile.

"Tch." Ankh rolls his eyes, but he takes the box from Eiji and he carries it almost reverently as they make their way back to Cous Coussier. Once they're inside, he takes it to a corner of the restaurant and stands guard over it, pausing only to check the time on his phone. He's protective of it, even from Eiji, so Eiji leaves him be and starts his morning prep work in the kitchen.

When a half hour passes, Ankh comes to get him, and grabs him by the arm again. Together they take the box back to the property where they found it. Ankh lets him have the box when he reaches for it, and Eiji puts it down by the edge of the garden. He opens it and pulls Ankh back with him as he steps away. 

The raven turns its head from side to side as if it's looking around at the newly-revealed world. A beat later, it spreads its wings and takes flight. They watch it land on a nearby telephone poll and next to him, Ankh lets out a sigh of relief.

Eiji turns to look at Ankh, and notices that his brows are still furrowed. "See?" he says, hoping to comfort him. "It's going to be alright." 

*

The second time it happens is after Eiji defeats a yummy. He's lying on his back on the grass in a park, trying to catch his breath and calm the adrenaline rush of battle, when Ankh reaches down, grabbing Eiji's left bicep again and hauling him to his feet.

"What the--"

"Come on," Ankh says, and he keeps his hand tight around Eiji's arm as he leads him out of the park into a nearby neighborhood. Eiji lets himself be pulled along, concerned that there's a second yummy about, but then Ankh yanks him into a narrow alleyway behind a row of shops and stops. 

"Ankh, what's going on..." His words trail off as Eiji sees what has Ankh's attention. There's a sparrow on the ground, cheeping furiously. It's next to a tall chain-link fence that boxes in electrical equipment. On the inside of the fence, next to the electrical equipment, is a small baby sparrow, just outside of its parent's reach.

Eiji looks up. Nestled on top of the fence is a nest. There's also a gate on the side of the fence, but it's held closed by a padlock. Before he can even wonder what they should do, Ankh takes the lock in his talon and rips it from the fence.

"Ankh," Eiji says, but his heart isn't in it as he reaches into the enclosure and slowly cups the baby sparrow in his hands. 

He glances between the parent sparrow, now chirping at his ankles, and at the nest out of reach, and then asks Ankh to open his hands. "You can get it back up there, right?" he says when Ankh raises an eyebrow at him.

Ankh's expression immediately softens, and he takes the baby sparrow from Eiji with a gentleness Eiji's never seen from him before. He easily jumps up onto the top of the fence, balancing somehow gracefully on a metal support beam as he returns the baby sparrow to the nest. The parent sparrow flies up, landing in the nest to reunite with its child, but once it confirms it's there, it turns towards Ankh, cheeping defensively, its wings fluffed and riled up. 

Ankh ignores its reaction to him, and reaches out towards the sparrow anyway. Eiji thinks it will attack him, but after the sparrow and Ankh seem to regard each other for a moment, the sparrow stills. The chirping they've heard since they entered the alley quiets and the sparrow calms, tucking its feathers back against its sides. It doesn't protest when Ankh touches it or when he runs his index finger down from the top of its head to the back of its neck.

"What was that?" Eiji asks after Ankh jumps down, his shoes making a thud as they hit the concrete.

"Nothing," Ankh says. He immediately heads towards the mouth of the alley, but the image of Ankh calming the sparrow stays with Eiji for a long time.

*

The next time Eiji finds his poor bicep being crushed by Ankh, it turns out there's a seagull hiding in the shade by an abandoned factory.

"It's dehydrated," Ankh supplies.

After Eiji goes off to find it some water and the seagull drinks its full, Eiji asks, "You can sense them, can't you?"

Ankh sighs. "They're not yummies, and they don't have particularly strong desires."

"But you can sense them all the same."

Ankh's mouth thins. 

"Maybe it's because they're your kin," Eiji suggests, but Ankh just huffs and produces a medal from the palm of his talon.

"I have more in common with this medal and even this human body than I do with these fowl."

Ankh has a point, but he's also the one taking Eiji along with him on these rescue missions. "Either way, it's good of you, Ankh, to reach your hand out to help those you can."

Ankh scowls, but he doesn't deny it or storm off even when Eiji starts smiling at him.

*

It keeps happening and, for some reason, it's always his left bicep that's in a bruising grip as Ankh takes him along to rescue a bulbul from a stray cat or transport an egret with a broken wing to an animal rescue to be cared for.

Each time, it begins the same: Ankh looking like a stricken parent, worried for his chick. The ending changes though. Ankh goes from relieved and standoff-ish to relieved and open. The more birds they help, the more Ankh lets his emotions show and the more Eiji can plainly read on his face how much he really does care, despite what he says.

Eiji never mentions it, but sometimes he catches Ankh looking at him and Hina with a similar unguarded expression. He wears it as he watches them from the counter at Cous Coussier, he wears it when he pushes Hina out of the way of a yummy attack, and he even wears it in the quiet of the night when he's in his perch over Eiji's bed.

He's spent a long time worrying about Ankh being a threat, so it warms Eiji in a way he doesn't know how to put into words that Ankh's starting care about them the same way they've come to care for him.

*

He's heartbroken when Ankh betrays them. 

He hates standing across from Ankh on the battlefield. It's even worse when he feels himself losing control to the purple medals while fighting him. He doesn't want to hurt Ankh, just stop him, but the purple medals don't know the difference.

It's during this time that Eiji has a reoccurring thought. It feels out of place in the midst of a war, but he asks it in his mind over and over again, desperate for an answer.

He wants to know if Ankh, despite everything that's happened, is still saving birds.

*

Ankh doesn't save anymore birds that Eiji knows of, but in the end, Ankh saves them all.

Ankh knowingly gives his cracked core to Eiji, sacrificing himself to save the world. He saves Eiji too -- saves him from becoming a Greeed and from losing everything he is. 

The first few weeks afterwards are awful. There are reminders of Ankh everywhere: a popsicle stick on the ground, Ankh's shirts in the closet, Hina's teary eyes, the still-healing cuts and bruises on his body. 

He keeps the shards from Ankh's core with him at all times, and he squeezes his hands around them for what feels like hours on end. 

He and Hina find themselves sitting together quietly more than once, and it's in one of these moments of solace that Eiji tells her about the birds. Her eyes go wide as he explains the different situations Ankh dragged him into and how they resolved it, and she's blinking away tears by the time he finishes.

She leans against his side. "I miss him," she says.

Eiji puts an arm around her shoulders and holds her close. "Me too."

*

Eiji spends his time in Kogami's vault learning everything he can about the alchemy that created the Greeed. Kogami is happy to regal him with stories from the time of the original OOO and he gives Eiji access to all the data he has. 

After months of researching, Eiji doesn't learn how to bring Ankh back, but he does learn it's possible with the right formulas and alchemy. The night he realizes this, he sits on his bed at Cous Coussier, the shards of Ankh's core held tight in his palm, and makes a promise. 

"I'll bring you home." 

He doesn't know if Ankh can hear him, but he hopes he can. 

*

When he exhausts Kogami's data, Kogami connects him to an expert on alchemy in Sapporo, and even goes so far as to book Eiji a place to stay in an inn a short distance from where the expert lives. 

The sun has set by the time Eiji arrives at the inn and he collapses into bed, travel-worn. It's only a few hours later that he wakes to the familiar and painful feeling of a talon digging into his left arm. He jolts upright and his voice is hoarse and panicked when he asks, "Ankh?" 

He's greeted by silence in the room. 

He fumbles with the lamp by his bedside, but when he looks down at his arm at the spot where he can still feel a bruising grip, there's nothing there. He reaches for his bicep anyway, and he meets no resistance, his hand coming to rest against his own skin.

But the pull is persistent and Eiji dresses hastily before rushing out of the inn, letting the sensation on his arm guide him through unfamiliar streets and up a hill to a shrine. All the while, Eiji lets himself hope, one hand tightening around the jagged edges of the medal in his pocket.

The grip on his arm vanishes the same moment Eiji notices something on the steps by the shrine's gates. There, lying on its side on the ground, is a hawk tangled in twine.

Eiji's breath leaves him and all he can do is stare as his hands begin to shake. If he hadn't been led here, he wouldn't have ever known about, let alone found this bird. He knows what this has to mean and he can't quite believe it. He stands there, frozen, until the hawk lets out a small noise, and Eiji remembers that he has a job to do.

He approaches the hawk carefully, unsure of what to do with a bird of prey, but when he reaches out to it, it stops struggling, lying still except for the blinking of its eyes. He examines it to see how the twine is wrapped around it, and carefully, he begins unraveling it from around its torso and wings. The hawk barely squirms and he feels tears well up in his eyes. 

When he finally frees the hawk from the last of the twine and lets it go, he expects it to fly away. Instead, it stands on the steps, regarding Eiji. Eiji stares back, and it's then that he sees the feathers on the back of its head ruffle slightly, like someone just ran a finger over them. 

"Ankh," he whispers, and it comes out like a sob.

The hawk takes off, spreading its wings and disappearing into the night sky. Eiji stares up after it, and though tears now fall freely down his face, he finds himself laughing, giddy and relieved and hopeful all at once. He takes out the two halves of Ankh's medal and stares down at where they're resting in his open palm. 

He thinks of the first time they rescued a bird together, and of what he said to Ankh to try to comfort him. "It's going to be alright," he tells Ankh like he did back then, and for the first time in a long time, he knows it will be.


End file.
